THE BLACKOUT: THE NEWS MEDIA

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK with BILL CARTER

Published: August 16, 2003

Of all the news organizations straining against the dark to cover the blackout on Thursday, local newspapers faced the stiffest challenges.

With most of their reporters, editors and printing plants concentrated in just single unplugged cities, papers in Cleveland, Detroit, New York and Toronto were often reduced to ''putting out a paper like Ben Franklin,'' as an account in The Detroit Free Press described its struggle.

At The Free Press and many other papers, editors carried candles through darkened newsrooms to light their way. At The Cleveland Plain Dealer, reporters wrote stories in longhand, then recited them over the telephone.

And at The Toronto Star, one editor fiddled with a manual typewriter while a reporter shuttled by bicycle to pick up news reports from The Canadian Press news agency, which has its own generator.

In a number of cities, a rival even lent a hand or a printing plant to help a competitor through the night. At 5:30 p.m. at The Plain Dealer, the editors realized that the power would not return.

''It was hellish,'' the top editor, Douglas Clifton, said. ''We had no power at all. Nothing. Zero.''

The Plain Dealer, owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications, resorted to an emergency pact formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with smaller competitors, including the Knight Ridder Akron Beacon Journal, which retained power. Mr. Clifton dispatched 15 editors with a handful of technicians and page designers and a load of computers to set up a makeshift newsroom in The Beacon Journal office.

Meanwhile, at The Plain Dealer office, the staff hauled out small battery-powered lanterns. A managing editor even drove to retrieve a portable generator from his house, leaving his family in the dark.

With help from The Beacon Journal printing plants, The Plain Dealer produced 420,000 copies of its paper, more than the typical 375,000. But the edition was just 16 pages instead of the usual 60 and with several pages of mishmashed type.

Finding printers in a pinch paired strange bedfellows in other blacked-out cities, as well. The Free Press relied in part on the plants of two newspapers operated by Gannett, owner the rival Detroit News. The Toronto Star, the largest newspaper in Canada, was saved when its sister paper, The Hamilton Spectator, regained power in time to help out.

The whims of the power grid were capricious. The blackout barely affected The Daily News in New York, but nearly crippled The New York Post. The Daily News printing plant in Jersey City regained power quickly, in time to print more than one million copies of an issue with 27 pages devoted to the blackout. The newsroom had backup generators, and the only danger was an uncertainty about the quantity of fuel.

Executives said the fuel would run out at midnight, but they were not sure exactly when, said Les Goodstein, president and chief operating office of The Daily News.

''You are sitting there in the newsroom,'' Mr. Goodstein said, ''looking at your watch, thinking, 'God, if this things runs out of fuel. we are going to lose everything and we have to start from scratch.' ''

Extra fuel arrived, and the editors produced the paper.

The Post, however, is printed in the Bronx. Around 6 p.m., its publishers realized that power might not return to its office or its printing plant and began hunting furiously for an extra printing plant. Its executives eventually found space in plants run by The Bergen Record, but was unable to publish more than one stripped-down edition.

The Post printed 250,000 copies, half as many as usual, with just three pages of text and four photographs related to the blackout.

''Obviously,'' said Lachlan Murdoch, the co-chairman and publisher of the paper, ''we didn't have the good fortune of being able to operate our plant and to get out our papers the way other people did. Given our circumstances and the fact that we didn't have any energy at all at the plant, I think it was a fantastic effort.''

The national newspapers and television and radio news organizations were relatively undisturbed by the loss of power, in part because of backup power and in part because they could rely on operations around the country.

But local television stations in New York and other major cities also suffered sporadically.

In the New York metropolitan region, WNYW-TV, Channel 5, and WWOR-TV, Channel 9, both owned by the News Corporation, experienced the most problems, largely because a plan to install a backup generator at their transmission site at the Empire State Building was not completed in time, said Jim Clayton, general manager of WNYW, which also operates WWOR.

All the stations found enough power to provide coverage of the blackout, even though it was unclear how many viewers could see the efforts.

''You just have to hope somebody is out there,'' Mr. Clayton said.

Photo: James N. Crutchfield, left, publisher of The Akron Beacon Journal, production official, Terry Whitney, and editor, Debra Adams Simmons, with a copy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer that was printed in Akron. (Photo by Akron Beacon Journal via Associated Press)